


Patience

by witheredsong



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:49:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witheredsong/pseuds/witheredsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignettes in lives of friends and lovers.<br/>Patience - From latin “patiendo” : to suffer</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Old fics about my favorite German footballers, now posted here for archiving purposes.

Ibiza. Sun and sea. Basti, in an uncharacteristically tender gesture, ruffles his hair. His throat closes up for a few moments, and he feels the ghost of that caress haunt him throughout the day. Patience, he prays.

 

He is good at nicknames. But can’t afford to call Annemarie something else. That would be opening himself up, letting her in. He can’t do that, yet. She is there, and he is grateful. The other emotions will come with time. Patience. Comfort is all he wants now.

 

He cuts off all his hair. Defiance, new beginnings. He returns to training, there is Christian to contend with, and the acid-burn of incomprehension and anger threatens again, but Bert intervenes. He feels cold in his anger, and Christian won’t look him in the eye.

 

Out in the field, the heat is heavy, and humid, and the burn of muscles after a good workout feels like reunion with an old friend. He gets teased about the new look, “Going to join the Foreign Legion, Chris?”, and Flo and Roman pat his ass any chance they get, “Mighty firm butt, Metze…highlight of Sonke’s film.”

 

Basti laughs and teases and slings his arm around his shoulders, and the ache that Metze has carried on since he knew Tina was pregnant, pushed away in the euphoria of the WC, and forcibly tamped down in Ibiza, surfaces with heart-clenching violence and then eases. He carefully breathes in Basti’s dear familiar scent, of crushed grass and clean sweat, and something lemony from his cologne, and feels almost happy again. No regrets. He has prayed for patience. The greatest of the virtues. Opens his eyes, and Basti is brighter than the sun. He smiles. Basti’s eyes hold some emotion he can’t afford to recognise. Patience.

 

Out in the car-park, he pretends not hearing Basti call, “Metze, wait up.” He is almost there, starting up the car, almost free, when Basti knocks on the window. He climbs out of the car. Patience. He can’t, won’t look Basti in the eye. He stares up at the golden evening sky instead. Suddenly, Basti pulls him into a hard embrace, and it’s too much, too hard. “You idiot.”, Basti says, one hand caressing his shorn head, still holding him close. Metze feels his eyes burn. He prays for patience.


	2. At play, two boys (and a bewildered third)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loss and love and loss and helplessness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because At Swim, Two Boys messes with my head. My OTP. More precisely, the Metzelder brothers with mentions of Basti.

These days Christoph wonders if he’s sane. Sometimes during the night he’ll jerk awake, the darkness echoing around the room. He’ll be convinced Basti’s waiting for him outside. He will pad downstairs, feet bare on the cold marble floor, shivering, bare-chested in thin sweat-pants. The knee and ankle will remember the ghost wounds. The limp will be pronounced so much that even his by now unconscious masking of the slight drag won’t work, and he’ll feel off balance. But most of all he’ll be convinced that if he only opens the front door, Basti will be standing outside, cheeks red from the icy cold wind, illuminated by the street lamp, and everything will be alright. Every time, he opens the door into an empty street, leaves swirling in the drift, the night inexpressibly devastating, like a promise not kept.

 

Malte has woken up to sounds of Christoph shuffling downstairs for the past few nights. He’s watched Christoph, hiding in the shadowy corners of the living room, the darkness at the corner of the stairwell. Christoph won’t appreciate his spying, but he can’t stop watching, convinced his brother will be lost to the night forever if he doesn’t hold him with his eyes. It’s always the same. His brother will not even bother to pull on a shirt or sweater, will limp down the stairs with this expression of utter determination, utter hope on his face. He’ll open the door and stand there in the cold night, as if expecting to find someone there, waiting. He’ll stand on the empty porch, eyes suddenly dark with sorrow. He’ll then turn back, shut the door with exquisite care, climb the stairs again, the limp even more pronounced, and the look in those haunted eyes makes Malte’s breath catch every time. Christoph will close the door to his bedroom, but Malte knows the night lamp will shine for the rest of the night. His brother will lie on the bed, motionless, waiting for the morning.

 

In the half-light of dawn, Malte will silently watch Christoph moving around the kitchen, re-assembling his serene face for the world, eyes a little bit more fragmented, smile a little too bright. He’ll be terrified for his brother.

 

Christoph dreams. Basti is walking away from him. Basti always walks away from him. He hates it when Basti walks away from him. Always. He says to the dream Basti, I wish you didn’t. It breaks my heart when you walk away. Basti smiles. Where Metze? I am standing on your doorstep, always. Come.

 

Christoph jerks awake from his sleep. He pads downstairs. He opens the door to an empty street. One day Basti will be there, enfolding him. Christoph will crawl into him, into his warmth, and sleep, dreamless.


	3. Stranger in a strange land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wedding reception is on at full force.

The wedding reception is on at full force. Basti is happy to have his dearest friends and his family around him, with him, on this, the most important day of his life. Beside him, Tina is radiant in her white gown, her hands folded protectively on the bump where his son rests in her womb.

Friends, team-mates, relatives mill about, talking, laughing.

 

Fabe is chatting with Flo, while Christoph sits with his mother and brothers, listening silently. Basti turns to Tina, tenderly tucks a wayward curl behind her ears. She smiles up at him. When he looks away, he suddenly sees Christoph say something to his Mom, who pats his cheek. Chris stands up, and walks out of the door. Basti is perplexed. Metze isn’t going right away, is he? He turns to Tina again, says apologetically, “I’ll just…”, and she laughs and says, “Just go!”

 

So he almost runs in his haste to catch up with Metze, but doesn’t have to go far. Christoph is sitting in the garden, away from the noise and festivities. Basti sits down beside him, and both are silent. Basti asks him, “Why did you come out here?” Metze answers almost absentmindedly, “I needed to be out in the fresh air. I was feeling a bit unwell.” But then, he shakes his head and smiles at Basti. “But today is all about you. How do you feel Kehli?”

 

And Basti, he babbles the truth in his heart, as he has always done with Metze. “It’s the happiest day of my life. I…I can’t express my joy in words, Chris. To think that Tina is finally my wife, that the baby will arrive in a month’s time…I feel I’ll never need anything else.” He misses the way Christoph’s knuckles turn white as his hands ball up into fists.

 

A few moments of silence follows his declaration. Basti touches Christoph’s shoulder, because his friend seems to be lost in some deep thought. “You must be feeling better now. Let’s go in. I am sure they are wondering where we vanished to.”

 

But Metze just stares at him for a long moment, then stands up and says, “I should be going.” Basti is surprised, “But why?” Christoph calmly says, “Go in. You belong there, Kehli.” Metze has already started to walk away, before Kehli can stand up and retort, “And you don’t?”

 

Metze turns just once, a faraway look in his eyes, “There…I am a stranger in a strange land.”


	4. Loneliness sustained by a constant face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how it all begins.

**Loneliness sustained by a constant face**

 

This is how it all begins. One morning in January, Christoph wakes up, alone, to find himself in England. The sky outside is leaden and ominous instead of blue, the air is heavy and damp instead of crisp, and most inexplicably, the morning news on the radio is in English, instead of the comforting German he’s used to. It’s this shift is language which disorientates him most, more so than the unfamiliar roads, the new teammates, the new stadium, the new life. His skin feels stretched tight over bruised bones, the syllables of English rolling off his tongue feel alien, and everything aches…the phantom ache of a missing limb. He does not remember a pair of blue eyes, crinkled at the corners with laughter. He, of course, can’t afford to remember, no….

 

Or probably this is how it begins. Jens calls him up, asks him how his rehabilitation program is going. He asks after Lasse and the new baby and Connie. Then Jens asks him, casual, deceptively soft, “Hey, I miss you in front of me, defending the goal. Care to do that again?” The longing hits him, bitter, sharp. To go away, to be free of complicated relationships, to not be hit with this hollow ache of desire every time he sees…but no. He can’t even bear to think about a slight-strong frame moulding to him in the joy of winning, in the burn of desire, in the comfort of friendship, in the agony of unrequited…. Words and names Christoph will not, will not remember. Where they used to be lodged, inscribed in his brain, there is a miasma of sorrow, gently obliterating them. He lives for the present now. What happens after Jens’s call is a blur. The agent from the Gunners sits in the shadowy upper reaches of the Westfalenstadion, Christoph puts greater care in his tackles, makes his passes sharper, moves more precisely, concentrates more fiercely on football than he’s done in the past four years. He caresses the ball, scans the field, and something falls into place inside him. He reads the striker’s moves those split, all important seconds before the movement comes, blocks them with the cruel, surgical precision that made him the best defender in the 2002 WC, before the injuries, before the long frustrating days of waiting, before the wildfire joy of holding Basti, watching that lithe body move beneath him, feeling as if he was swimming in the clear blue sea at Ibiza, weightless, free, sun-kissed. Before everything became complicated, Tina, and Luis…oh God, Luis…. But no, even remembering those names hurts him in fierce raw ways, and he’ll not go back, now…not when he has broken the chains, not when football is his first love, his only love once again, not when he’s regaining peak form, playing the whole ninety minutes more and more for the first team. Those days of sitting on the subs bench, or not making it at all, are slowly, but surely past, there is Jens, to whom he owes this new lease of life, Tomas, familiar and friendly and never once alluding to Dortmund, Thierry with whom he strikes up a strange friendship, discussing football and Wittgenstein, and somehow getting more and more drawn into his captain’s “Stand up, Speak up!” campaign. These days he’s so busy, with training and new friends, and new projects that he comes home barely able to think, his eyes shutting with exhaustion the moment his head touches the pillow. He sometimes wakes up with tears on his face, body racked with emptiness and anguish, but rarely alcohol (forbidden), sometimes pills (prohibited), take care of the problem. He resolutely bars the doors against the dreams that come at night, when he is at his most vulnerable, when he misses Germany and his old team (not anyone in particular, okay, maybe Roman) and the familiar cadences of German around him, when he dies to hear bad austro-pop, and rips off polish hip-hop from the net, even though in theory he frowns upon the practice of piracy. 

 

It happens one day after practice. He had been laughing at something Jens said, and blurts out, unthinking, control slipping for a moment, “Oh, that’s classic! Remember how Basti and I had to almost carry you home, and Connie laughed her head off when you howled at the moon and woke the neighbours and Basti…”, he is laughing at the memory so hard that there are tears in his eyes, his breath comes in sobbing gasps, and Jens’ eyes are too kind. Christoph avoids mentions of his shared days with Tomas and Jens after that, safe in teasing Cesc and his never-ending procession of horrendous hair-cuts, his break-ups, his dependence on Phil’s crepes for sustenance because he is nineteen, and his heart is broken and Phil, Phil is always there, the strong bed-rock of Cesc’s love, unseen, but necessary, with his crepes and his unconditional support. Christoph knows that they are headed for disaster, because sometimes he’ll see their heads bent close, sitting next to each other on the team-bus, he will allow himself to remember, and though it’s raining outside and the water drops slide like tears on the window-panes, there will be sunshine in his mind, a kitchen, two boys laughing, the blonde, singing along to Robbie Williams, cutting up the meat for the serious eyed dark-haired one with his hand in plaster. Christoph will feel so afraid for CescandPhil, he will tense whenever someone puts in Robbie on the team-bus music system…And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you…he’ll laugh along with the others, but there will be something jagged and hard and bleeding caught in his eyes, he will be rougher, more ruthless on the field later, fans will chant his name, “The German Assasin”. No one will dare to speak to him but Thierry and Jens and Arsene, they will do so with the care of someone handling something fragile and tender and explosive… Christoph will stare out of the window of the team bus, blind and deaf, all the long way home.

 

As soon as he moved to London, he changed his mobile number. The only people from home whose calls he’ll take are his brothers and his Mom, and of course Jogi. The Nationalmannschaft duties are unavoidable, he is proud to play for his country, but the heartache that comes with the territory is often too much. He has been lucky so far in that Basti had been injured and hence not a part of the team. He feels mean and cheap, that he should be glad of Basti’s injury because he has a little respite from whatever it is that he wants respite from, but this time, there’s no escape. To make things worse, the friendly is against England, the game is scheduled at Emirates. He doesn’t want Basti’s shadow to fall here, his refuge, and he is inexplicably angry with himself, with the FA for scheduling the game in his stadium, he is furious at life for being so hard, so frustrating, so heartbreakingly complicated. And he is furious with himself for secretly counting the days to the camp, for catching himself unawares, thinking of Basti…how will he look, what he’ll say, (or not, because Christoph knows this from long practice, long experience, they are better at tearing each other up with silences than with words, and now, there is no “they”, no more words, only the silence). He pads from room to room in his flat, watching the lights of the city reflected on the Thames, searching for something which is not there, not there, but the absence haunts the rooms far more fiercely than Basti’s presence did at his tiny flat in Dortmund. Basti’s absence is a house. Basti’s absence is such a large house that he walks through the walls, hangs pictures in sheer air. The hours go by in a jumble of images, vague conversations, confused tumults of nights and days. People and things seem unreal, he sometimes stumbles and thinks if this is some kind of deja vu. Or if he is dreaming them happening, and he knows he will wake up with a gasp in some strange dark unfamiliar place, naked, helpless. He feels unfinished. He feels scattered.

Ghosts everywhere, in blinding sunshine, in blue shadows created by moonlight. I am a ghost in this city of spirits.In this vast hinterland of grief. He thinks.

 

**There is only your glance against so much emptiness…**

He wants a drink, forbidden to a professional athlete and wonders about the privileged life the other half lives…the freedom to play rainy football on fields dangerously slushed with mud, the freedom to act out heart-break by sobbing on a friend’s shoulder and get stupidly drunk, the freedom to break one’s own fucking legs and not having to worry that even a plaster opened and a fully healed limb may not be enough, may find one wanting. Oh, the freedom to walk on the streets holding hands, lean against the wall in dark alleyways and kiss a lover stupid, open to the air and sun and sky, freedom to walk with friends in a place and time where it does not matter who loves whom and what they do (how they do) in the bedroom. As the world is, and especially in his profession, the paparazzi pic in his imagination makes bile rise in his throat and leaves him nauseated. Everything demands a price. He pays it. Only, he sometimes wonders if he got short-changed, badly. The deep restlessness that leaves him sleepless demands to be sated, he is too tired and the team meets tomorrow. He can’t afford this, like in so many other things; he can’t afford not to be at his best, especially tomorrow. His professional pride won’t stand for it. (Something whispers, maliciously amused, in his heart…. Oh, you just want to show Basti, he isn’t missed. Not at all. In fact you haven’t thought of him once since you got here. The dark-circles would give it away, no?) He’s human, after all. He doesn’t think of Basti voluntarily, that’s true. He isn’t a masochist. But Basti lives and smiles and walks with him each day. Basti, suddenly smelling his cologne on a stranger, haunts him; his fingertips retain the sense memories of Basti’s skin. On the field with his teammates, his feet remember the way Basti passed the ball, and he sometimes misses the cues Arsene shouts out. In the supermarket, he turns sharply when someone calls out, “Christoph…”, breathless, (devastated each time, tricked by his own brain) and it’s as if Basti is everywhere, just at the corner of his vision, vanishing when he desperately turns for a look. He wants to forget, but everything around him remembers Basti. The fucking joke of it all. Bastard. Bastard. He thinks. Fucking bastard. The walls of his apartment close in around him, and the one missing photograph on the table ruins the décor completely. He bloody should have fired the useless decorator, he thinks savagely as the glass in his hand makes a satisfying crash against the wall and shatters.

 

 

**That’s why the air is left trembling**

**Why everything trembled like a wounded flag**

 

Or maybe this is how it all begins. Basti sits straddling his favourite chair, his chin stubbornly set, the setting sun lighting up his blonde hair from behind, and he looks like an angel. An avenging one…bright, and beautiful and magnificent. Christoph sighs and turns back towards the window. (His eyes hurt, and he feels a headache coming on. What do you expect, he thinks, you looked at the sun too long). The tree outside is dappled in colours of autumn, in light and shade, beautiful, heralding the end to a day. His rosary beads, Czech lamp-beads, clink, as his right hand clenches around them in his pocket. Basti sounds furious and heartbroken and determined at the same time. “You are not leaving.” The sound of the chair legs scraping on the bare wooden floor, “Damn it Metze, you are not leaving.” Footsteps behind him, Basti’s voice sounding scratchy, painful, “You can’t leave, you can’t leave, what…what will I do?” A pair of arms around his waist, Basti’s face in the crook of his neck, damp, “Christoph, please? Please, please Christoph, please. Please?” Christoph tilts his head back, palm open on the sun-warmed windowsill, the frame cooling slowly in the evening’s darkness. Before him, the tree is alive with sound, the birds returning home. Why now, he thinks, why does all his love come upon him, when Basti is so far away from him, and he is so alone. The night gathers slowly, tiptoes across the room; plays hide and seek in the corners, covers the two figures at the window with blue shadows.

 

 

 

 

**And on through the streets like a man wounded,  
Until I understood, Love: I had found**

**My place, a land of kisses and volcanoes**

 

He goes to receive her at the airport, not out of a sense of duty. His is already too highly developed, he thinks wryly. She makes him want to do it. These strange grey days in England, when he can’t make himself happy, he finds it impossible to disappoint her, his songbird. Her tour is over, she’s home for a month, and she doesn’t demand anything. That’s what Christoph likes about her. (One l-word is not as good as another, but that l-word he can’t use, it isn’t fair). Her parents disapprove of him, low-brow footie-player, and it amuses him no end. It amuses her too, he knows. Watching her coming through the arrival gates, lavender dress rumpled, curls flying this way and that, eyes tired, distantly sad, her manager, agent, parents moving around her all business and flapping hands, he feels a wave of tenderness wash over him. A vague, painful tenderness, as one feels for a stranger, and he knows with a sudden clarity that he’ll marry her, his sons will grow up with her love for Chopin and her long elegant fingers and her curls, her daughters will have his smile and his dry humour and be six-feet tall amazons and play football. He likes the image, the peace it brings, the sense of belonging…he watches her suddenly notice him, smile breaking out and lighting up that plain pretty face, watches her walk towards him…she embraces him, and as he inhales her scent, of long airline travel, of tiredness, of home… he murmurs into her ear, “Marry me?”

 

He watches her play the Steinway from the doorway. She wears red, passionate and strong, and as the music fills the room, her hands dancing over the ivory keys, he hates, hates himself for wanting so much of her when he has nothing to give. He hates himself for entering her fairy circle and breaking the peace she creates in a room by just being there. He does it, anyway. “Caitlin.” He says. “Caitlin. I need to go to Sri Lanka for a few days. Before the wedding.” She looks up from her Ravel, not quite understanding, still caught within the spell of her own casting. “What? Christoph, Dad and Mom will throw a fit.” She isn’t perturbed, much; there is an imp of perversity dancing in her eyes. Her accent grows sharper, more exaggeratedly posh. “Though they’ll be glad if you get eaten alive by a shark while you’re there. They think I’m making a mistake, marrying beneath myself.” She collapses with laughter and he can’t help but join in, moves to sit on the couch by the French windows, as she rises from the piano-stool, and suddenly wonders at how much he laughs when he’s with her. That strange ache, that Basti-shaped hole in his heart remains, but the pain is so much more bearable these days. He idly wonders if Jochen will tell Basti of his plans to go and see how much work Roterkeil has done in Lanka, (Basti his partner in this, like much else too, Basti, who made him a better person), and if Basti will follow. Not that it’s possible. Tina’s expecting their second child, and Basti won’t leave her. Not for Christoph. The bitterness threatens, but Christoph resolutely turns away from it, and there’s a warm weight in his lap, a soft cool hand stroking his forehead and cheek. “Where did you wander off to, sweetheart? Sometimes, you’re in the room, with me, but not there with me at all. Who is it Cris?” Her perceptiveness always amazes him, and he feels ashamed. She deserves all of him, all of his heart, but too much of himself he has already given to Basti, and he can’t un-entangle the threads to save his life. He smiles, blurred around the edges, strokes her back, and says, his voice steady, “Just someone.” Her eyes are dark and serious, and kind, and she says, “There is no love that doesn’t pierce the hands and feet. The measure of your love is always in loss.” His throat aches and eyes smart, and he buries his face in her shoulder, in her wild curled strands catching on his stubble, winding around his heart, inexorable and just as stubborn as the imprints Basti has left. “Don’t leave me.”, his voice cracks. “Never,” she says, kissing the top of his head, his dark brows, his thin eyelids, the salty track of unwilling tears leaking out of closed eyes. “But promise me. You’ll love me a little too”. She holds him through the storm.

 

 

**As if suddenly the roots I had abandoned**

**Were searching for me, the land lost with my childhood –**

**And I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.**

 

He thinks. In itself this isn’t anything extra-ordinary. Well, for a footballer…and all the jokes, but he thinks. One day, he’s in Harrods, buying a silk sari. An Indian sari, from that land across the oceans, that land of spices, where a man goes in search of his soul. Max Mueller. Hesse. Those who said India was the home of dreams. His mother wants a piece of cloth from that land, that captures the brightness of a sun that burns and purifies, a land like a prayer, an impossible jigsaw puzzle of languages and people and temples and rivers, his mother wants an Indian sari, to make into an alter-cloth. So here he is, being bewildered by the weaves, the colours, the strange unpronounceable names (banarasi, gadwall, kanjivaram…), senses overwhelmed by the feel of cloth moving like liquid honey through his callused fingers. He remembers Roterkeil, and the work being done in Sri Lanka. Strange how the memory works, he thinks. From a small piece of cloth, to the land it comes from, to Roterkeil and Sri Lanka, and full circle he is back to Basti. As he caresses a sari on the pretext of taking time deciding, he thinks, “Strange how you never let go of me. You are me. Where will I go, how shall I leave myself behind?” There’s nothing poetic about this pain. It just is. The moon is the moon, the sky over London is depressingly grey and it drizzles, but that’s nothing new, he is still Christoph. He pauses when he sees a blue silk embroidered with gold thread. The clothes of heaven. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.

 

Dear Mama,

Sending you the sari you wanted. Do tell if you liked it. Mama. I miss you.

I am well. Did you see? My first goal in the premiership. I am happy, I eat on time, I am thinking of taking classes again… I am happy. Tell Stefan and Sebastian not to break too many bones without me there to give them company. And tell Malte the Playstation feels lonely without him. Mama. I wish I was young again, and you could give me a kiss when I scrape my knees. I love you.

Your,

Christoph. 

 

 

**Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.**

 

He has this dream. He is with Basti; there is this knife in his hand. He carves his name on Basti’s hip with the sharp, glittery edge, and with each press of the blade, blood wells up, warm and red and stains his hands, the bed-sheets, but Basti is so silent, face a mask, eyes dark in the moonlight. Christoph carves his name on the beloved body, and says, “I claim this hip. I want to touch you. I want the things which are mine, which belong to me." He feels his eyes well with boiling tears, and he traces Basti’s hair, his face, the bones of his spine, each beloved indentation, each scar…the angry wound on his hip, he kisses it and the blood stains his lips, salty, bitter. “I want, I want.” He says, coiled tight, anguished. Basti just lies there, not speaking, like he’s not there, the furious grief in Christoph marks itself in blood on Basti’s body, who smiles at last, bloodless, pale fire…”I have eaten your heart. Your beating heart, Christoph. It tasted of cinnamon”. The crazy tenderness of Basti’s smile, and Christoph knows there is a dark hole where his heart used to be. They lie on the bloody bed, Basti’s blood marking him, dark, congealed, like an infected wound, while Basti sings in his ear. He wakes up, drenched in sweat, bitterness in his mouth. He throws up, until there’s nothing left to throw up. He still tastes Basti in his mouth. He touches his own hip, and winces at the ghost of an open wound. Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. He touches his own body to remember.Thus he was, here and here. He kissed me here, the crook of my neck. He bit me hard, just above my navel…a perfect dark red ring of teeth-mark. The physical memory blunders through the doors the mind has tried to seal. A key to the chamber of forgotten things. The bloody key that unlocks devastation. When he wishes to forget, his body wails and keens and roars, it howls. 

The trapped bird spreads it’s wings under your collar bone. The ridge of your brow, your strong hands, your eyelashes fanning out on your cheeks… these things undo me, Basti. Thus you were, here and here. With all the love that never occurred between us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter headings and poem lines are from Neruda.


	5. The earth will continue to live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, he goes to the little unadorned chapel in his neighbourhood, enters the darkened church, and kneels before the altar. He lights one candle, prays.

**But you will fall with me like a rock into the grave:  
thanks to our love which will never waste away,  
the earth will continue to live.**

In Trincomalee, the signs of devastation are left behind in sad forgotten ruins; the empty stretches of sand, and the graveyard with the eerie silence of nameless graves. Yet, in this bleak devastated landscape, hope shines in the faces of the children, and Christoph, who knows their stories, of loss, abuse, of abandonment…wonders at the resilience of the soul. Hope echoes in their laughter when he plays with them on the beach, bare-feet, the sand damp between his toes, and just to see their dark eyes shine, their sudden surprised smile, he lets them steal the ball from his feet. When the games are over he carries the smallest boy on his shoulders, asks them to tell him stories, and listens to their voices, furiously angry at the cruelty of the world. Sometimes in the evenings, when Jochen’s attempts to teach him the basic words, he laughs at his mangled efforts and he feels the iron band around his heart loosen in the twilight, in the calmness of the sea.

 

One day, he goes to see how cinnamon is peeled and even volunteers, but after a few attempts gives up, covered in the bark dust, light-headed with the heady scent, unwilling to waste more of the expensive spice. When he comes back, chasing after his brash and cheeky 13 year-old guide, breathless with laughter, he finds Basti sitting on the verandah of his bungalow, watching him. He stumbles, and then Basti is near him, helping him up. “Basti…” he says, robbed of language, and Basti replies, quiet, intense, “You are a bastard.” Then punches him. He falls to his knees, surprised at the sudden movement, his jaw throbbing dully, but Basti is kneeling beside him, cradling his jaws in his hands, shaking, kissing him with the famished intensity of a starved man. In broad daylight, beneath the wide blue skies, and Christoph can do nothing but take and take and take everything he thought he would never have again, and are their tears or blood in his mouth? Tears, blood, one and the same, he takes in Basti’s anguished caresses takes in everything that Basti gives.

 

He suddenly jerks awake in the middle of the night, the taint of some nightmare bitter on his lips, the inexpressible weight of pain in his chest, tightening his throat, his eyes filled with strange tears that refuse to fall. He is bathed in sweat, the covers pooling around his waist, yet, the salt sea air is heavy with the perfume of cinnamons. “Where are you? Basti? Where, where have you gone?”…the space beside him on the bed is empty, and for a moment fear and loss and panic blind him. Then there is a warm hand on his shoulders, someone sits and the bed dips, and he is pulled into a familiar half embrace. “Hush, Metze, I am right here, right here with you.” He slowly calms down, the shaking goes, but when he speaks, his voice is laden with tears. “I dreamt you were gone. You went into the waves, and I tried to follow, but the sand was in my eyes, and I tripped, and when I looked up, there was nothing by the sea, and then I couldn’t remember your face. I knew if I remembered, you would come back to me, I tried and tried, and everything was still, but my feet were covered in sand and I couldn’t.” The person behind him remains silent, and when he turns, he sees silent tears on his face. A kiss, damp, is pressed to his shoulder, one to his jaw, the crinkles beside his eyes. The hands trail over his body, methodical, tracing with thorough intensity, a memory game, learning each feature by heart, holding each piece close, dear. “You won’t forget, you won’t. You’ll close your eyes, and something will come back to you, pieces of me, my smile, my kiss, the grass on my legs, the sound of the stadium. You come to me always Metze, always, when I want you, when I don’t, when I am so angry I could wash you off me, scrape my skin raw, but there you are, and I am lost.”

 

There is a haunting unreal quality to that night and when Christoph remembers it later, it is always in broken fragments, like a half-forgotten dream. He remembers the draperies billowing in the wind, the smell of cinnamons, the distant roar of the sea. A thin sliver of the moon half behind silvery clouds, the susurration of the coconut trees, and the body beside him, holding him close, safe. He remembers the utter serenity and peace, the caresses like reassurance, like a blessing, and most of all Basti’s eyes. On bad days, when everything goes wrong, the feeling like ants walking on his skin, the gray London summer like a pall, those eyes come back to him, and leave him utterly profoundly alone. The strange intense clarity of those eyes, and the feeling of being completely loved, absolved, wraps around him and he finds strength to go on.

 

Sometimes, he goes to the little unadorned chapel in his neighbourhood, enters the darkened church, and kneels before the altar. He lights one candle, prays. He blesses Basti for giving him that night, for coming back so he could rest, for that one crystal eternal moment of happiness and peace.


End file.
